Attaching a note to yourself to an email

Thunderbird Add-ons
#1

It would be great to be able to put a comment or note to yourself on an email that’s in your inbox or a folder – it’s great to be able to color code, but a text note would take email organization a step further.
Use cases:

  • adding a note to yourself that a bill has been paid or a bank statement downloaded
  • pointing yourself to a key place in an email round up – saving because of fifth item…
  • noting that you’re forwarding this to these two people because…
#2

Like the long-unsupported addon “Message Notes Plus”, perhaps?

The nearest I could find that still works is this: https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-GB/thunderbird/addon/xnotepp/

As the author notes, that will no longer work with TB v78, which releases soon.

#3

Yes, but I think there are some flaws in Message Notes Plus that hobble its usefulness:

  • You can’t tell that there’s a note unless you right click, then click again, and even then you can’t see the note until you click a third time.
  • It’s also a little flaky – I see that there’s a reset note window – I needed to use it because the window disappeared a couple times on me.

For this to really be useful

  • You’d have to see that there was a note and open it easily. A small triangle icon like that used in spreadsheets at the top left of the from field might be a good way to do it. And then you could open the note in one click by clicking the triangle icon
  • It would also be useful to show the first couple of lines when you hover over the icon.

Bells and whistles

  • expand “Save As” in right-click menu to “Save As”, “Save As with Notes”, “Save Notes”.
  • allow the user to choose a background color for a note
  • give the user the option to start the note with (a deletable) automatic timestamp

That’s my wish list. I think this would give email a nice accessibility boost for many types of folks. Is there any technical reason it can’t be done?

Cheers,
Kim

#4

It can’t technically be done with the current limited state of the features (APIs) available to addon developers.

It might be possible in future, depending on what features the developers add. Not soon, certainly.

Personally I think that attaching notes to emails is a good idea, but holding them locally is far too restrictive. So syncing them across devices, and making them available to non-TB clients, is what I’d look for.